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Good morning. "It may sound weird… but I'm the one who wants to apologise for their deaths. I want to thank them somehow. It's as if they can hear, but they can't respond." These heartbreaking words are the words of 26 year old Margo who works in a Ukrainian mortuary, from a Â鶹Éç report. I was struck that Margo spoke of being hard, not able to cry, yet she speaks words of grief to the men who arrive in body bags. They are words that recognise the tragic loss of life in a war where the body count is mounting higher and higher. Increased losses for Ukraine are matched by worse losses for Russia, and reports claim that Ukrainian soldiers at the front line say Russia's ability to absorb pain appears limitless – as if Russian young men are somehow less grievable. Can war ever happen without at least one side treating its own people as dispensable and ungrievable? And can peace ever happen without recognition of the incomparable loss and grievability of every person on every side? To grieve someone is to recognise their essential humanity. It is to recognise their uniqueness, that they cannot ever be replaced. To grieve is also to show our own humanity, in solidarity with those whose life is like ours – fragile and precious. Religious traditions, including my own, often stress the value of life. In Christianity, life is sacred because it is made in the image of God. Jesus is recorded as saying, ‘Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight. Even the hairs of your head are all counted. Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.’ The value of human life matters – not just its outcomes, or achievements. To grieve a lost life is to say it had value and dignity. Failing to grieve even one life ironically starts the slippery slope of arguing that some lives matter less, that they are expendable, that they can be spent in war and forgotten in peace. The logic of war and the logic grief are intimately linked. I wonder whether there is a Margo somewhere in Russia, silently apologising to young men who crowd their mortuary, affirming, in the midst of death, that their lives mattered. These two Margos are supposed to be enemies. But maybe they would be united in grief. Jesus commanded his disciples to love their enemies. In war, this love may start with grief: grieving your enemy means recognising their humanity; in that grief, hope for the slow move towards peace might just begin to blossom.